AI and sustainability on tap for Oracle Cloud applications
Oracle unveils new capabilities for AI use cases, smart manufacturing and sustainability for Oracle Cloud SCM applications at Oracle CloudWorld this week.
Oracle Cloud ERP and supply chain applications are being infused with a new dose of AI agents, smart manufacturing and sustainability features.
Unveiled this week at Oracle CloudWorld, AI agents powered for autonomous work will span across the Oracle Fusion Applications for ERP, supply chain management (SCM), HCM and customer experience. Use cases will be specific to the application, and in general are aiming to enable customers to automate processes and get personalized recommendations or content.
Analysts said the new capabilities are in line with what other major ERP vendors have recently focused on. But Oracle's addition of generative AI agents as well as a more comprehensive sustainability offering adds new -- and in some cases unique -- competition to the market, which could benefit customers.
Oracle did note that its customers won't be charged for the AI capabilities as they are made available in Oracle Fusion Applications. It has also established certain "rules of engagement" around the usage of AI, said Steve Miranda, executive vice president for applications development at Oracle, during a keynote session Wednesday.
"For all AI, we maintain the exact same agreement with customers regarding the security and privacy of their data," Miranda said. "We never pass any data to an LLM [large language model] and never use customer data to train LLMs."
Steve Miranda, executive vice president for applications development at Oracle, on stage at CloudWorld 2024.
Smart manufacturing and sustainability
Oracle Cloud SCM will now include functionality to improve manufacturing and supply chain operations. The new Smart Operations for Manufacturing capability in Oracle Cloud Manufacturing provides front-line workers with real-time information on work orders and generative AI agents for shift reporting.
The new Smart Operations for Maintenance functionality in Oracle Cloud Maintenance is aimed at enabling manufacturers to improve identifying and resolving asset maintenance issues by providing supervisors with a single dashboard for scheduling and receiving real-time alerts on issues that need immediate resolution.
These new capabilities can help modernize manufacturing software such as manufacturing execution system (MES) and product lifecycle management, Miranda said.
Unlike traditional MES, the Oracle Cloud SCM Smart Operations capabilities are tightly integrated with multiple enterprise systems, using one data model and one technology stack, he said.
The new Oracle Cloud Sustainability is an application that connects ERP, supply chain, enterprise planning and reporting, and other systems to give companies a single view of all their sustainability initiatives, said Natalia Rachelson, group vice president of cloud applications development at Oracle, in a briefing prior to the conference.
"This can show a company where they stand vis-a-vis their sustainability goals, like carbon footprint reporting," Rachelson said. "It pulls data from multiple systems to enable this and applies AI to help categorize various things that comply with what could qualify for sustainability efforts versus not."
For example, customers can use Oracle Cloud Sustainability to help determine which suppliers can meet sustainability requirements, with AI assisting in examining the data involved, and then help track and manage sustainability reporting requirements for suppliers.
Oracle Cloud Sustainability will be available for customers soon, but the release date has not been set, Rachelson said. It will be available at no extra charge for licensed customers.
Improved Oracle Cloud SCM
The Oracle Cloud SCM suite of applications has seen significant advancements since the product area was taken over by Chris Leone, Oracle's executive vice president of development for HCM and SCM applications, according to Holger Mueller, an analyst at Constellation Research.
The team is in overdrive and now showing the first results with not only sustainability offerings, smart operations and more. If Oracle keeps up innovating at this speed, it will quickly become an alternative to manufacturing market leader SAP. Holger Mueller
Holger MuellerAnalyst, Constellation Research
"The team is in overdrive and now showing the first results with not only sustainability offerings, smart operations and more," Mueller said. "If Oracle keeps up innovating at this speed, it will quickly become an alternative to manufacturing market leader SAP."
Oracle already has a lead in traditional AI and now is taking the lead on generative AI with its AI agents, as Oracle becomes the only ERP vendor to use its own cloud infrastructure for its applications, he said.
"This is good news for enterprises that want to see competition," Mueller said.
The Oracle Cloud Fusion Applications capabilities unveiled at Oracle CloudWorld are consistent with themes from across major enterprise applications vendors, so there was nothing truly surprising, according to Liz Herbert, an analyst at Forrester Research.
However, there are positive aspects and questions around the AI-focused developments, Herbert said.
"On the plus side, Oracle is getting more specific and providing clear examples of how the AI will work in specific business process areas like supply chain and HR," she said. "On the downside, some of this is still very early or not yet available. Customers want to hear more about real examples, real success stories and the pricing associated with these."
The Oracle Cloud Sustainability release is generally consistent with the evolution of enterprise applications in this area, as other major players like SAP, Salesforce and Sage already offer sustainability applications, Herbert said.
"It looks like they are giving the Oracle application at no additional cost likely because they will make their money in other ways, due to the data sources needed to make that application useful," she said.
Jim O'Donnell is a senior news writer for TechTarget Editorial who covers ERP and other enterprise applications.
